Ensuring Blind Peer Review

Ensuring a Blind Peer Review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer-review for submission to this journal, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text:

  1. The names of the authors are removed from the manuscript and all accompanying files. If the authors cite their own works, the references should be replaced with [redacted] or [blinded].
  2. All references to institutions, cities, and countries are removed from the manuscript, images, appendixes, supplementary files, etc., and replaced with [redacted] or [blinded].
  3. File names should NOT include your name or other identifying information. All other metadata referring to the author in the document file will be removed by the system.